First of all, does such a will exist? Hegel once said, “The people is that part of the state that knows not what it wants.” It seems at first glance that that is true. How many men there are who, when faced by a political problem, seem completely incapable of judging and making a decision. In regard to questions of prime importance in contemporary politics the great mass of individuals, no matter to what class they belong, remain hesitant and uncertain. There is in the last analysis no firm and conscious will in the many. There are unreflected and obscure impulses which govern men in political matters. And if such are the isolated volitions of individuals, what can one expect of the sum total of these volitions? Is it possible to derive from the sum of these negations anything positive and to extract from these fugitive volitions anything that resembles a collective will? The individual wills are not only too feeble and too little conscious; they are also too dissimilar and contradictory to permit being constructed into an ensemble. It is a chaos of infinitely diversified indications; making it an absurd project to try by means of an election to secure a parliament that will constitute a faithful mirror of these chaotic indications. Yet popular will should not be, cannot be, a myth, for in every chapter of modern history it is encountered and its power felt. At the birth of constitutional states and at every epoch of their increase in strength its action is noted; whether in the victorious thrust of the principle of nationalities or in the development of the socialist idea. All these movements--and how many others!--have denoted that there is in the great masses an active and powerful will. In war, too, is it not the popular will that leads masses to consent to sacrifices such as would not have been believed possible? There is such a thing as popular will, and no arguments given against its existence are valid.